The Raven Warrior

by Alice Borchardt

  At best they were a source of nutrients and occasional entertainment; at worst, destructive pests whose more dangerous impulses had to be circumvented. Just how we were controlled wasn’t clear to me, but there was a sense of vast power that lay just out of my reach. The tree might not exert its strength more than once in a thousand years, but when it did, I was very certain it was able to find a satisfactory solution to its problems. Satisfactory to the tree, that is. As far as the offending humans were concerned, I was not so sure.

  “Awake, my lady?” Albe asked.

  “Yes.”

  We had been a long time at arms practice last night. Ilona knew a great many tricks that I, and I’m sure, my teacher, Maeniel, never heard of. They ranged from hand-to-hand combat tactics to maneuvers with sword, shield, or spear.

  I was good—my armor helps a lot. It’s a surprise to opponents when it covers my skin. But Albe was best. She learned, and quickly, everything Ilona had to teach, and she needed no second chances. Ilona might put her down the first time she demonstrated one of her special holds, but never the second.

  And when a completely unarmed Albe took her sword and “killed” her with a neck-breaking hold, Ilona owned Albe the best student she ever taught and told her that she could choose the man she wished to wed. Whoever that man was, Albe would probably gift him with the chance to become the total ruler of the city.

  Albe smiled at that, and I saw in her eyes the same bleak sadness I had seen when she spoke about how she had scarred her face to prevent the pirate who captured her from selling her at a fat profit.

  The sadness came—went—and her face showed the cold indifference of a killer.

  My friend, I thought, you do not care and the death of your enemies is only a way to keep score in the game that is all that is left of your life and your love.

  But now she was sitting up beside me, eating some soft, yellow fruit the like of which I had never seen before and smacking her lips at its sweetness.

  “I’ve been up for a time,” she said between juicy bites. “But you were up so late, I thought I’d best let you sleep. Ilona and I put out the roots for the food seller. He left these for us to try. They are a novelty, newly found by a dreaming woman belonging to Meth’s tribe and family. Here. Have a taste. Spit out the peel. It’s tough.”

  I did. “Nice!” I said. “Sort of like a custard. Very sweet.”

  Albe was busy chewing. She nodded and indicated a bowl with more of the yellow fruit and other more conventional items, like grapes, apples, strawberries, and plums. I selected a bunch of grapes. They were red-brown and so plump they squirted juice into my mouth when I bit down.

  Cateyrin brought us some bread, cold meat, and curd cheese.

  “The longer I’m here, “Albe said, “the more I like this strange city. They have all manner of odd but new, pleasant things to enjoy.”

  She cut a slice of meat with her knife. It was dense gray-brown and looked as though it might have been larded before it was cooked. I tried some. It tasted like slow-roasted, fire-cooked beef rubbed with spices and garlic.

  “See? Have you ever tasted anything like that?” Albe asked.

  “Yes, but only in the few chiefly houses I’ve visited.”

  “We’ve nothing like it. Not on our islands. Whale, seal, fish, shellfish, and the occasional stringy old sheep and goat are all we get.”

  “It’s beef,” I said.

  “Ha!” Albe replied. Her mouth was full. She was pairing the beef with bread and fruit and eating it. “Cows are too valuable to eat. We get milk and cheese from them.”

  “I don’t imagine they eat them often here, either. Likely this is guest food.”

  “Yes. We must earn our keep,” Albe said. “Generosity requires generosity.”

  When we were finished, we went to wash. I found myself speaking again to the tree while standing under a sun-warmed waterfall on rocks covered by soft moss. A mass of roots filled the room, growing all along the walls and down into deep pools in a tortuous passage that led away into the distance.

  “Does this belong to your house?” I asked Cateyrin.

  “No.” Cateyrin looked around in an uneasy manner. “This passage extends the length of the city, from the top of the mountain until it drains into the vast caverns at the bottom of the valley. Many come here to bathe and relieve themselves. The water carries all pollutants away and the tree cleans the water when it runs through mats of roots growing all along the river bottom. But it is a place of truce and anyone who misbehaves here is punished by death. We . . . we don’t . . . know how the tree does it, but they always die.”

  I heard shouts and laughter from downstream. The voices were male and Cateyrin jumped out of the water and ran into the thick growth of cattails and water plants that bordered the stream.

  “If they always die, why are you afraid?” Albe asked.

  Cateyrin turned and blushed pink all over her creamy skin.

  “I’m not afraid, but shy. The men and boys come here to look for pretty girls, and while they might honor the river here, that wouldn’t stop them from waylaying me elsewhere. This is where I met Meth and . . . I don’t want to form another connection so . . . soon. Besides, the game is to see them first and decide which ones you want to let catch sight of you. I like to know what I’m getting into.”

  Albe laughed. “Or what’s getting into you!”

  Cateyrin giggled, blushed furiously, and vanished into the tangled undergrowth.

  I held up my arms, closed my eyes, and let the water flow over my face. One of the dragonfly’s eyes shone down on me, concentrating the light. I didn’t hear the voices any longer, only the sound of rushing water and snatches of a distant, wordless song that I knew originated with the tree.

  I pondered my next more, not knowing that my path had already been chosen for me by forces I could neither understand nor control. I thought about “Her,” seeing Her face in Ure’s cup, and found I couldn’t remember anything after that moment. I had come to myself when Albe and I fled Ure’s strange steading. He had tampered with my mind after I spoke with the Faun’s head, but I couldn’t remember how or why.

  Maybe he had tried to kill me. But I was sworn to Her service and just possibly he hadn’t been able to accomplish my death. “She” was a powerful protectress.

  Or just possibly She had not wanted him to make a trial of my courage. After all, She had already done that.

  But I could remember nothing more. No, that was wrong. There had been a flicker of memory in the last few seconds before Albe and I took the footpath down the mountain. I looked back. Looking back in some instances is a very bad idea. They say the great warrior heard some sound, looked back, and saw the dread hag washing his bloody winding sheet at the ford. And when you leave a loved one, you should not look back lest you see the mark of death—a bloody smear on their forehead.

  I had looked back and seen that Wic, who believed herself healed, remained as disfigured as she ever had been, the purple birthmark swelling on her cheek and half covering her mouth, and I wondered if the powers Ure ruled were real or simply illusion.

  Yes, but who can say if the illusion of great beauty is not as powerful as the reality.

  Then Cateyrin came running back, shouting, “Guinevere!!! Albe! The Fand! The Fand has come! Help!”

  I called my armor and didn’t bother to stop and dress. I did grab my sword when I reached the riverbank. The armor is in and of itself a form of clothing. It presents a hard, metallic surface at my breast tips and the junction of my thighs, and the rest of my body is covered by a woven filigree of twining, coiling motifs, beautiful in their own ways, as are the illuminations of the magnificent mass books the Irish make and dramatic as the carvings on the great, monastic crosses of the church. For we knew the cross of old before the Romans debased it into an instrument of torture, and it symbolized the earth’s four directions and the divine center.

  Let my flesh be bare to the earth and sky, and call the powers, I thought
as I ran through the central room of the house toward the portcullis where Ilona stood alone, defying the Fand.

  The Fand was just as beautiful as she had been last night, and she wasn’t wearing much more: a gold, mesh dress dripping with what looked like diamonds. It draped her slender body, emphasizing her curvaceous form and concealing just enough to create a more intriguing invitation to seduction. She was accompanied by a glassy-eyed Meth and four of the massively powerful men Cateyrin called Fir Blog. These were dark with black eyes and a thick growth of downy, almost silken-looking, brown hair on their arms and thighs.

  Humans don’t have much of a hair pattern, not like a deer, a fox, or a wolf has, but these men did. The hair was thick on the outside of their arms and less thin, almost absent, on the inner aspect of their arms, legs, and chests. I couldn’t see more than that, because they wore simple green tunics woven all of one piece with holes for the head and arms.

  They wore chains around their necks, as did Meth, chains that seemed welded together, not clasped and much too small to be pulled off over their heads.

  “Oh, Meth!” Cateyrin cried, and tried to push her arms through the grating to touch him.

  I saw the Fand’s eyes narrow slightly. That was all the warning we got. But Albe was fast, and she jerked Cateyrin back just in time to keep a three-foot gold scythe from cutting both her arms off. There was no hiding place in the corridor, and I felt a long, slow chill, because I could not see any possible way the Fand could have wielded it.

  “Get back!” Albe ordered in so commanding a voice that everyone, including myself, retreated.

  The Fand simply looked disappointed.

  Tuau challenged her with a savage cat wail that lifted the hair on the back of my neck. The Fand glanced at him once, then dismissed him.

  “Open the gate,” she commanded. “I want the rest of the mariglobes and these two women.” She pointed at Albe and me.

  “No!” Ilona said. Then she did an odd thing: she lifted a veil and gazed at the Fand through the meshes. “I cast the omens last night. You will not enter here, Creature of Darkness. That much I saw.”

  The Fand did not look impressed. “You will do as I command. They all do . . . in the end. But I will give you one more chance.”

  She stretched out one hand—her nails were an inch and a half long—and gently caressed Meth’s cheek. “Do you like this creature?”

  Cateyrin started forward again. Albe and Ilona yanked her back. The edges of the Fand’s nails glittered and threw back the light. Then she used the nail on her forefinger to cut an opening into the big vein on the side of his neck. The dark scarlet of blood was a shock against his pale throat. He didn’t react or appear to know he’d been injured. One of the Fir Blog stepped forward with a cup and placed it where the stream of blood flowed into it.

  Cateyrin made a terrible sound, but Ilona threw both arms around her and held her back. By then there must have been sufficient blood in the cup to interest the Fand, because she plucked it from her servant’s hand and drank. When she was finished, she handed the cup back to her Fir Blog servant.

  “Tonight this darling of mine”—she gestured toward Meth—“will share an intimate little supper with me. But alas, only I will dine. Were he handsome, intelligent, witty, or even modestly amusing, I might allow him to continue to exist for a few weeks. But he is none of those things, so . . .”

  She lifted Meth’s hand and placed his smallest finger in her mouth. He reeled slightly, but had no other reaction when his hand fell away from her lips. Where his little finger had been, there remained only a raw, oozing stump.

  “Get Cateyrin out of here,” Albe snarled.

  “Not so fast,” the Fand said. “Let me make my offer. I will return him to you. My larder is full and I have more slaves than I need. In return, you give me the two women.” She pointed to Albe and me. “And let us say, half the jewels,” she continued. “After all, you deserve a little something for your trouble. Fear not, the fighting women are a valuable commodity to me and will come to no harm at my hands. In return, I will leave my slaves here to protect you from those who might feel cheated by these women’s theft of the mariglobes. Come, think of it. Five strong slaves. He”—she gestured at Meth again—“is only slightly damaged. Half the jewels, a king’s ransom. That many of the marvel stones, glittering wonder workers, all for you.”

  “No!” Ilona snapped. “Be gone, you evil thing!”

  “Mistress Ilona, you didn’t let me finish. When I show you that I have the means to take what I want, I believe you will have reason to reconsider my generous offer.”

  Ilona, Albe, and I backed away, dragging Cateyrin with us. The dress the Fand wore shimmered with a fiery, white light. It grew brighter and brighter until it was almost blinding, and while we watched, the portcullis began to glow a dull red. Then it began seething, sending out the sort of vapor a new sword shows at the forge.

  Yes, I thought. She can make it red-hot. But even a red-hot bar won’t give until it is stricken by hammer.

  But by then, the central bars were turning white and big drops of metal began to rain down from the melting gate to the floor. A hole began to appear in the center of the gate.

  We backed deeper into the passage until we reached the central room of the house. The hole in the center of the dully glowing portcullis grew larger and larger.

  “Close the wall, Mother,” Cateyrin wailed. “Close the wall!”

  She was speaking of the second level of defense, the wall whose dagger-sharp crystals met like a vicious set of teeth and could shred then crush anything between them.

  “I can’t!” Ilona screamed. “I can’t! It won’t work!”

  “No, it won’t.” The Fand spoke, seemingly unconcerned. “The machines that close the walls are metal, and they are melting also. As are your swords,” she added as an afterthought.

  I tossed mine aside. Albe swore and followed my example. I imagine the hilt was heating in her hand, as mine was.

  “Cateyrin, run!” Ilona screamed.

  The actinic shimmer of the dress the Fand wore grew brighter. The white-hot bubbling of the metal in the door increased, and the hole grew wider.

  I had only one idea, and I didn’t think it was a very good one. But it was the only solution that presented itself.

  I leaped toward the melting gate. It was only red-hot at the edges, and I knew my armor would protect me for a time. But even with the protection of my armor, I felt a flash of pain when my hand rested on the steel grating. I felt the surge in my chest as I moved the gate just a little from the reality of the city. Then I turned and ran back toward Albe and Ilona.

  “Get me some water!” I shouted, and just then Cateyrin returned with a bucket.

  I snatched it out of her hand, ran back toward the portcullis, and hurled the contents of the bucket directly at the steel grating. A second later, scalding steam filled the narrow corridor.

  I threw the bucket back at Cateyrin. “More water!” I shouted.

  The air was clearing as the steam condensed into rivulets of water on the cold, stone walls. I found I could see the Fand again. She looked baffled, gazing at the cooling iron grating.

  Then she said, “I see. Here and not here.”

  The portcullis thinned to the consistency of smoke and she stepped through the phantom steel. Dress glowing with light and heat, she walked toward me, saying in an oddly bland, conversational tone, “Two can play at that game. You aren’t the only one who knows that trick.”

  Heat seared me as she approached, and the glitter of the stones in her dress was blinding. I cannot think now why I did not run. But in life I have always known it is better to close with the enemy.

  She was only a foot or so away when my fire hand shot out toward the only part of her not protected by the glittering garment she wore—her face!

  My arm and hand entered the maw of a monster. I felt a half dozen rows of circular, saw-edged teeth spin and try to chew my hand and wrist to bits. A do
uble row of a dozen suction-tipped tentacles rather like a squid’s wrapped themselves around my forearm.

  I hurled every ounce of my power into my fire hand and created something like a lightning bolt. The thunderclap echoed deafeningly in the narrow corridor and what had been the Fand burst into flame. Only my armor saved me from the burst of raw, incandescent fury of the fire that consumed her. That and the fact that Cateyrin arrived with another bucket of water. I don’t know if she hurled the contents at me, the gate, or the Fand, but I was the one who got drenched, and that may have saved my life. My armor was so hot, the corridor filled with steam again, and had it been a real metal ring mail, I would have been boiled alive in it like a lobster in its shell. But it was, thank God, a creation of the faery smiths, and it shunted heat, light, and flame away from my body.

  Just as well. For a few seconds I stood transfixed in front of the pillar of flame that had been the Fand. Albe had been entirely correct. It was not human, probably not even female in any meaningful sense. If anything, it reminded me of fish we sometimes catch by night in deep drift nets. There is nothing to them but a mouth filled with daggerlike teeth and a lure that rises from the fish’s back and dangles in front of that lethal mouth. On the lure, a light burns, and that lying light calls the prey into its teeth.

  The thing I saw in flames before me was mostly mouth. It had, as I have said, a circular maw fitted with rings of teeth. Tentacles equipped with suction cups surrounded the mouth. The body was like a slug’s, dark, wrinkled, and wet, but amazingly ropy, with fat, which fed the roaring blaze. Instead of one lure, as the anglerfish has, it had many, and the lure nodes scattered all over its body still sustained the shadow of a young human woman’s delicate beauty, even amidst the flames. The devouring fire roared within the phantom of female beauty, illuminating and destroying it at the same time.

  For perhaps a few seconds more, it continued to move toward me. Then it collapsed into a greasy, blackened but still flaming ball and I heard the golden rings and shimmering jewels of its gown clatter on the floor.